Co-star takes the heat as Gallo bombs at Venice

Seven years since he was booed at Cannes for The Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo appears to have bombed again with his latest directorial effort, Promises Written in Water, which premiered at the Venice film festival yesterday.

The controversial US director faced a hostile reception at Tuesday's screening, with the festival audience keen to see how Gallo would follow up the egotistical Bunny, which climaxes with the actor-director receiving oral sex from Chloe Sevigny.

His new film tells the story of an undertaker whose girlfriend (Belgian supermodel Delfine Bafort, above) is dying. Gallo, of course, takes the lead male role.

If they were keen to mock another Gallo vanity project, the film festival crowd was not to be disappointed. Promises is a 'Vincent Gallo Films' production - which as well as his starring role, is written, directed and produced by Gallo. He also scored the music and is credited as the film's editor.

Promises even opens with a 10-minute shot of Gallo, pacing about in a hotel room, prompting Guardian reviewer Xan Brooks to quip in his two-star review that "Gallo's drama puts the i in solipsism".

Some 200 people walked out of the film, while many of the rest, Brooks noted, only remained "in a spirit of mockery". 

As for Gallo, he avoided a reprise of the jeering he received at Cannes by cancelling a press conference at the eleventh hour yesterday and leaving Bafort to face the cameras on the red carpet at the film's premiere last night.

In other news from Venice, Swedish actress Noomi Rapace has spoken for the first time about the US version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Rapace told the film website IndieWire that she was not offered the role of Lisbeth Salander in the Hollywood remake. Nor, she claimed, did she chase the part which was eventually offered to the little-known American actress Rooney Mara.

Rapace said: "I never met [director David Fincher], nobody asked me and I didn't want to do it. It's interesting when people think you're always full of shit because I always said that I'm done with her, I did everything I could." ·